＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
On April 30, 2019, the curtain closed on the “Heisei” era, which lasted for 30 years and 4 months, and the era of “Reiwa” began.
How will the world change over the next 30 years of “Reiwa”? The 30 years of the Heisei era were “very short years” for me. Compared to the 40 years from 1949, when I was born, to 1989 (which is not so different from the Heisei Era, except for the period when I was an infant), the Heisei era seemed very short.
At this rate, I feel that the 30 years of Reiwa will go by “in a flash. I will be 100 years old. If only I had a longer life span…
１．What is “AR”?
Recently I have been hearing the term “AR”. This is not the elemental symbol for argon (Ar).
It stands for “Augmented Reality,” a term that refers to “technology that augments the real environment as perceived by humans using a computer, and the real environment itself as augmented by a computer.
Augmented reality is a variant of “virtual reality” that literally augments the real world as seen by humans by adding, deleting, emphasizing, or attenuating information in the real environment that surrounds us at that time.
I often see places, such as art museums, that lend out “equipment that plays a commentary about the painting or artist when you go in front of the painting.
I understand that this is the same kind of device that can be used to easily acquire information about a place on a screen using a smartphone, even in an ordinary town.
２．The Age of AR
The evolution and refinement of “Artificial Inelligence (AI)” and “robots” has been remarkable even during the 30 years of the Heisei era.
During the 30 years of the Reiwa era, AI will become even more advanced and will be incorporated into our daily lives, becoming an indispensable part of our lives.
The symbol of postwar affluence was the “Three Sacred Treasures”: an electric refrigerator, an electric washing machine, and a television (in black and white). In the 1960s, the “3Cs” of “Car (private car), Cooler (air conditioner), and ColorTV (color TV)” were also called the “three sacred treasures.
In the same way, new “three sacred treasures” of AR will appear again.
３．Could the era of marrying a “robot” be upon us?
The evolution of robots is already remarkable, with household robots such as Sony’s AIBO, a dog-like robot for pets, and cleaning robots such as iRobot’s Roomba, as well as the emotion-aware humanoid robot Pepper seen in hotels and other places.
Robots are rapidly evolving and becoming more precise in many areas, including industrial robots, medical robots, rescue robots, security robots, and entertainment robots such as the Go robot (AlphaGo, etc.).
I think it will not be long before we will have a “household robot” that does not only clean the house or take the place of a pet dog, but also a “wife” that has feelings like a normal human being, performs all kinds of household chores, and can even offer advice and listen to complaints.
If this “Wife” also has an “entertainment robot function” like a “Go robot (AlphaGo, etc.)”, she will be able to enjoy a game of Go by changing her skill according to her “Husband’s” skill.
Also, a robot with emotions dressed as a child might be able to talk to or care for an elderly person and call an ambulance if something should happen to the elderly person.